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oh my god shut the fuck up www.theatlantic.com/family/archi...

it's giving couldn't think of anything else to write about this week

It’s giving old man yells at cloud.jpg

It’s giving ah shit I owe them a column

“Jazz broke slang. Now we all speak jazz.” -someone in 1920

Oh, stewardess?

Legit lol. I love to reference that scene.

I understood that reference.

Death of Language people are the most stupid people on earth.

‘Yes, people have been wrongly saying this exact thing since the beginning of recorded time, but the difference is that *I* am right about it.’

For the most part actual contemporary linguistics scholars do not do this and instead tend to be the people who sit you down and say "language change is inevitable and natural, actually."

Of course. It’s exclusively an Ignorant Blowhard thing.

Language changed up until I was nine years old. Then it became immutable.

Coincidentally, young people also became far ruder to their elders a short number of years after that and everyone under 25 lost the ability to do an honest day’s work a few years after THAT.

There’s an incredible young scholar (Ivy degree and all) on TikTok & Instagram who enthusiastically breaks down all the different, useful, and fascinating linguistic purposes that “internet speak” serves. I wish the Atlantic platformed people like that; we’d all be intellectually richer.

The Atlantic has a phenomenal ability to take something kind of interesting (trends in language, slang, and culture via social media) and write about it in the worst way possible

Like, I think it is kind of interesting to talk about how the Internet has eroded the boundaries between subcultures in a way that causes a lot of creativity and enjoyment, but also flattens out cultural diversity. But he's just kind of mumbling through it.

Agree completely. Pre-internet, slang was fairly soloed between demos, but now everyone even across languages is kind of speaking 'net. I find that fascinating, but I never considered the "main function of slang to signal group membership."

Yeah there's a real shift here! I've noticed gay slang migrating to straight people way faster than it ever did before. But this guy doesn't manage to say anything interesting about it and calling slang "insidious" just utterly disqualifies the entire piece.

The only thing insidious about group signalling slang transforming across groups is when Nazis/white nationalists start using a normal piece of language to mean something nazi and then no one can use it.

The way the word "incel" changed from its inception makes me a little sad.

"Because Internet" was a really great read about how the internet/online communities have changed language. This article just sounds like "kids these days" with a new coat of paint gretchenmcculloch.com/book/

Book: Because Internetgretchenmcculloch.com Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language From Riverhead Books (Penguin, US) and Harvill Secker/Vintage (Random House, UK), available in hardcover, audiobook, ebook, and paperback! “Gr...

I love this book because (1) it’s fun and interesting and nerdy and (2) it gave me a way to talk about how the language of texting etc is different from formal writing without having to imply that it’s *bad*.

Cheers! Sounds interesting!

We're at a point that's like - what if you get to play around with the slang and cultural joys of drag, but while remaining a straight cis middle aged rich white man.

Not even as 'cultural appropriation' per se, because I think that's not quite the phenomenon here.

In some ways I think what it has done is signal who is Very Online and who is not. Occasionally I slip and realize that I've started talking like a Tumblr post to a group of 45-year-old office workers...

I have to remember that the common slang used on Bluesky/Twitter doesn’t work with my not-very-online friends who still use Facebook.

My dad asked me what "serving cunt" meant out of the blue last weekend. I hadda resort to using visual aids.

Yeah the actual interesting article would be about the speed of the new pipelines, how much this is reflected in information transmission generally, and where the silos do actually still exist. (Also would be interested to see if we are sort of... circling back to old slang quicker)

Personally I think "twenty-three skidoo" deserves a second go.

ah but anything less superficial would require an acknowledgment of race and class

Yeah - "main function" might overstate it, but I think it's something that works to delineate group membership, intentionally or otherwise. And I think there's something lost for people who can no longer really retreat into a subculture, because it's not distinctive any more.

Particularly for people who are excluded or marginalized in mainstream culture as it is, whether because of youth, or race, or gender, or sexuality, or lack of wealth, or whatever else. "at least we know how to party" well, now the secret is out.

Oh absolutely, slang can definitely convey membership I just debate that's it's purpose. Seems like so much slang comes from clever ways of saying the same thing, but with a slightly coded twist. Maybe I'm being too anecdotal.

Linguists do argue that that coded twist is the more enduring part of slang. The cleverness fades with repeated usage (and, really, beyond the creator of a new term, who is being truly clever?), so slang does function to signal you’re “in.” That is, until it gets co-opted by the mainstream.

I feel like he read "Cultish" and came back with the wrong ideas.

We ARE the group, just a rather large one.

Did you say that just to indicate membership in the group? 🙂

No...and now, yes.

English is beautiful because it’s a bastard language with broken rules that steals from everything and everywhere. Old English, Latin, German, French, Japanese loan words, American Slang and AAVE. And people look at this mess try to police it? Dweebs.

A recent favorite I am reminded of due to Elden Ring DLC dropping.

what happened to the atlantic

Jeffrey Goldberg

There’s still a lot of stuff there. My theory is that if you never publish anything stupid you’re being too intellectually timid. Like a basketball guard who never commits a charge But yeah the ratio of stupid does seem to be going the wrong way

There’s stupid and there’s straight up dangerous. Publishing anti trans bs, for example.

I will take a thousand obnoxious think piece panics over a single serious one

Same tbh but for me personally when it all becomes “about the kids” which this infers it just seems like all of these people have one objective and that is to just hate kids in every possible way they can. It’s really weird to me.

They are committed to the incredibly stupid. Conor F, Tyler Austin Harper, Shadi, TCW...all worse than worthless.

Yep. And it’s because of this- they have adopted the “Bennet Business Model” for national pubs in the digital age. That business model involves a lot of trolling. Shadi is probably the most shining example bsky.app/profile/prot...

This is what I've called the "Bennet Business Model" for national pubs in the digital era: Use the Opinion section to troll for engagement, while at the same time pushing bothsidesism in Politics articles to deflect criticism. The whole strategy maximizes audience. 2/4

Media biz structure more important than media personalities in most (but not all) cases